Adjusting to life with Lilah has been an ongoing process. She's a little bit of a mama's girl, which blows my mind. There are times when other people are holding her and she's crying, and I get ready to feed her, assuming she's hungry, and she stops as soon as I take her. She just looks at me with her huge, blue eyes, and that's all she wanted. She loves when I hold or cuddle or sing to her. I'm not trying to be all "poor me, my life sucks", but my relationship with my mother was far from close, and I don't ever remember a time when we were affectionate with each other. She would always say things like, "I'm just not a girly girl", or "I'm not the emotional one, Dad is". I remember the whole family watching Finding Neverland and bawling at the end, and me looking at my mother and having her say, "I don't get it." At the end of Ladder 49, she "comforted" us all by telling us it was just a movie, and not worth crying over. One of the few times I remember her hugging me was when I was leaving their house after a family intervention begging me not to get married. She cried too, and said nothing I could ever do or decide or say could change how much they loved me, and I'd always be welcome in their house. A week later, when I told her I hadn't changed my mind and was still getting married, she suddenly "wasn't comfortable" having me around the kids anymore, and that was the last time I saw the inside of their house. Any and all trust I had in a word she said was shot to Hell that day, and even if our relationship improves someday, I'll always feel like that hug, those tears, the promises were all a ruse to get her way.
So to have a little daughter who just likes being in my arms and staring at me is mind-boggling. I love her dearly, and I *am* an emotional girly girl who likes shopping and crying at sad movies and cuddling. It's just sometimes an effort to relate to her as a mother, even though our personalities are similar, because it's so foreign to me.
Our 3-mile walk outside yesterday was a success. She either slept in her stroller or looked around with interest the whole time. I overdid it a little and am paying for it today with really sore hips and legs, but I feel good, and we both got some good doses of Vitamin D (Lilah has a funny-looking hat line to prove it).
She's also gone from waking up around 3:00 AM to eat to 5:00 AM, which is more hours of uninterrupted sleep for mama! She doesn't cry when she wakes up. She either grunts and squirms around until she comes unswaddled and can roll around happily between parents, or she scoots over to me (I always sleep on my side facing her) and sucks on a breast through my shirt until I wake up to find those big blue eyes staring at me, and her open-mouthed like a baby bird with a mouthful of shirt. It's much better than waking up to a squalling infant. Her bedtime is between 11:00 and 11:30, so we always go to bed at a decent time these days. It makes me feel pretty old, but it's completely worth it to get a good night's sleep!
